Senior officials also said that the forms will be accepted till midnight and so the exact number of applications received could be ascertained only by Tuesday.
On the last day of submitting applications for the Delhi Development Authority's (DDA) 2017 housing scheme, buyers queued up to bank counters. Nearly 35,000 applications were received till 5 pm on Monday, while over a lakh forms were sold, officials said.
Senior officials also said that the forms will be accepted till midnight and so the exact number of applications received could be ascertained only by Tuesday.
"Buyers lined up at bank branches as well as at DDA headquarters to submit completed application forms. We were expecting a large number of buyers on the last day, as has been the pattern in previous years as well. We are expecting the total number of applications to exceed 40,000," a senior official said.
The DDA is offering 12,178 houses across all income categories at different locations in the city. Sources, however, said the number of applications for LIG flats remains less. Of the total number of applications received, only around 16,000 are for LIG flats. This assumes importance as of the 12,178 flats on offer, over 11,000 are LIG houses, which were returned during the 2014 housing scheme for being too small.
Meanwhile, the urban body attributed the increase in the number of applications to the relaxation in the forfeiture clause. The scheme was launched on June 30, with the last date being August 11. A meager 15 per cent forms, however, were sold till mid-August and so the last date was extended to September 11.
According to officials, the forfeiture clause in this year's scheme had made banks wary of giving loans for the registration money. The banks' refusal to finance the registration amount demotivated many buyers.
This year, DDA had put in a new clause of 25 per cent registration fee being confiscated, if houses were returned after the draw of lots, in order to make sure that buyers didn't surrender the houses and only "serious" buyers came forward. In a meeting held in July, banks had urged the housing authority to remove this clause.
Schemes chart
Houses on offer: Over 12,000
LIG flats: 11,197 (mostly in Rohini, Dwarka, Narela, Siraspur, Jahangirpuri)
Janta flats: 384 (Rohini, Mongolpuri, Sultanpur, Dwarka)
MIG flats: 404 (Dwarka, Narela pocket A-9, Mukherjee Nagar)
HIG flats: 87 (Jasola, Vasant Kunj, Sarita Vihar, Dwarka)
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